This Familiar Parable
by aldkhfa142
Summary: Post-apocalyptic AU. The world fell apart ten years ago. Dean's just trying to raise his brother before it finishes its death throes.
1. A Bush of Burdock

**A/N**: A fic written for the 25-word prompt table over at spn25 on Livejournal. This first part is a response to the prompt "Earth".

* * *

_THIS FAMILIAR PARABLE – PART I: A BUSH OF BURDOCK_

* * *

"As far as the eye could see, there was nothing but black earth – not one green blade of grass, and there on the edge of the dusty grey road there grew a bush of burdock. There were three off-shoots. One was broken and its white soiled flower hung; the other also broken, was bespattered with black dirt, its stem bent and soiled; the third shoot stuck out to the side, also black from dust, but still alive and red in the centre. It reminded me of Hadji-Murad. It makes me want to write. It asserts life to the end, and alone in the midst of the whole field, somehow or other has asserted it."  
--_The Journal of Leo Tolstoi, 1895 – 1899_, translated by Rose Strunsky

* * *

A frayed duffel bag hits the cracked dirt.

Empty earth sprawls before it in a broad palette of burnt siennas and raw umbers and the tired dusty green of weeds. A scar of scattered gravel traces up its spine. This field was lush with corn once, Jubilee and Earlivee and Pearl White, and before that the mosaic maize of the Native Americans that had first turned this soil. Now it's fallow. It's cornflower and daisies and milk thistle. Even the gravel road is slowly dissolving into packed dirt and yellowing wild plants.

Following the duffel bag are two knapsacks, one with its zipper held closed with a bent paperclip.

The ground is dry, crackling beneath restless feet. It rolls like the shift of shrugged shoulders, spilling over a hill into a stand of skinny trees. A river flowed through those trees, once, before it followed a new course; after that there was irrigation, a looming metal gleam of pipes and arches in the middle of the field that spread wide circles of life to tired and parched soil. Now they stand as rusted and cracked effigies of a more complex farming system than the silent pray for rain. The fingers of vines curl around the pipes' bent and broken arms.

Bugs stir and the sun burns and the forest far down the road throws a dark swath of shade across the dead fields. Someone counts into the loud silence.

"_1… 2… 3_."

The footfalls start before "three" has even brushed the tops of weathered dandelions; lungs spread wide to taste dusty air and legs spread far to lunge across the empty field. Dust puffs up in protest as it's torn loose by the grip of sneakers, the loud slap of their rubber soles against the ground echoing back in confusing reverberation.

They fly across the scattered gravel line, a racetrack paved solely for them. Their feet pound the earth as they gauge each other with eyes squinted against the sun. Even at twelve and sixteen, there's an appreciable difference in length of leg between the two, enough to make up for the age disparity.

They don't exchange words or taunts, too engrossed in the potential of their own singing muscles and gasped breath.

When a slow acid burn starts to build beneath his ribs, the twelve-year-old abruptly drops over the breast of the hill and turns. One foot slides in the gravel as he shoves off again, his palms pressing into the sharp gray-blue rocks before he's bursting over the incline and heading back the way they had come. He sprints on with his older brother cursing his name behind him.

Their pace turns all the more frantic, the exuberance of runner's high bursting across their features, and the weeds shuffle in disquiet as they fly past once again.

By the time their footfalls' echoes catch up with them, heavy breath and wide grins have driven them to the ground, one sitting atop the duffel while the other leans against the backpacks. "You're a cheating whore," states the older conversationally, raking his fingers through sweat-damp hair.

The younger hands him a bottle of water and grins.

A breeze starts off in the trees, dry branches bowing before its passing. It sweeps across the field with the blissful transience that all breezes have. They bask in the temporary relief, turning their sweaty faces towards the cold.

A city is burning a hundred miles ahead of them. The breeze carries the acrid smoke with it, but only enough to be mistaken for the slightly bitter smell of grass baking in the hot fields.

They cap the water and get back to their feet, stretching wiry limbs high to the empty sky. They brush the dirt from their ragged jeans and exchange excessive sighs and groans as they shoulder their loads once again. They move on, and the death-stained breeze moves on with them.

* * *

_FINIS PART I_

* * *


	2. Bible Black

**A/N: **Prompts this time around: "Yesterday," "Last," and "Air," in that order.

* * *

_THIS FAMILIAR PARABLE - PART II: BIBLE BLACK_

* * *

"Mother Crow  
Feels no pain,  
Speaks no word.  
Speckled egg,  
Hatching slow  
Bible black  
Baby bird."  
--Thrice

* * *

First there's fumbling at the front door, and hushed voices, as if they'll awaken the dead that aren't hiding behind dusty curtains and under moldering rugs. The rhythmic clicking of the lock pick's work is muffled by the constant chorus of the rain on an attic still filled with picture albums and outgrown toys set away for the next generation's leisurely perusal.

The lock snaps and hinges unused to functioning squeak; old unfiltered air spills out into a frigid autumn night. "I don't like it," the younger says. "Can you just _try_ to grow some balls?" says the older.

Road-worn sneakers ooze dark rainwater and sticky mud onto the burgundy carpet, turning the dark red darker. The older gestures forward with a battered old flashlight. "C'mon. It's just a damn house."

"_Someone else's_ house."

"If by 'it's' you mean 'it was', yes."

The house moans and creaks in a sudden gust of wind, but neither of them read it as a valid protest.

"Someone coulda died here," the younger says.

"People've died everywhere, Sammy, ever since ever," replies the older.

The younger adjusts his backpack and mumbles something that the older doesn't hear.

Wet fingers smudge the thick layer of dust collecting on an old hurricane lamp; the older kid gives it a shake and grins at the rewarding slosh of oil inside. The flashlight disappears into one pocket, and a lighter appears from the other; once the wick is lit, he pulls the oil-soaked cord down until it's just a yellow-blue lick of flame lighting their way.

"Joshua said never pillage or ramshack—"

"Ransack," the older corrects.

"That's what I said."

"Whatever, Sammy."

"Not s'posed to ranshack what still belongs to someone else," he finishes stubbornly.

Candlelight falls across the kitchen for the first time in a long time, and soon it finds the moldy mess of a bread drawer under the formica-topped counter. The older makes a face, holds up the white and green monstrosity crouching in a dry-rotted plastic bag. "I don't think anyone's claiming this. D'you?" The younger sticks out his tongue and rummages through the dusty aluminum cans in the next drawer over.

Several cans of vegetables and soup, two pans, two forks, and two bowls all disappear into the next room. To follow are two jugs of distilled water found in the dark confines under the kitchen sink. Next, several armloads of books from the modest library down the hall. There's a moment of contention between the invaders over what can and can't be burned; finally two hardcovers disappear into the younger brother's backpack, but not before the older demands the two already squirreled away there are surrendered. After five more minutes of shivering in soaked clothes the younger admits defeat, but not before ripping out the pages of his favorite passages and folding them into the deepest recesses of his bag.

Once the first pile of books is afire warmth pours across the carpeted floor, spilling up the walls and across the patterned tin ceiling. The two exchange wet clothes for dry and crouch before the hearth, taking turns warming their feast of green beans and chicken noodle soup. The other cans disappear into an Army-pattern duffel bag, accompanied by the remainder of the water jugs. The younger curls up with legs crossed, reading by firelight. The elder sprawls across his back, hands tucked behind his head, feet close enough to the fire to make his toes prickle with heat.  
For the better part of two hours it's companionable silence and crackling flames, something unseen and unheard since six years prior.

By the time the rain's started to recede the younger brother has collapsed across the couch, a blanket pulled up over his scrawny legs. The older's arms are curled around his knees. He flips through an encyclopedia, pausing on the things he's never heard of.

The younger's voice is a surprise. "If we had a house, what would it be like?"

"We had a house," the older brother replies after barely a moment's consideration. He flips from _'macadamia'_ to _'Macaire'._ "Don't you remember?"

"Kinda."

From _'Macaire'_ to _'Macapá'_ to _'Macapagal, Diosdado'_ the older talks in short, expansive sentences, of the neighbor's dog that used to chase Sammy and drool all over his hair, of Mom's cooking and baseball on TV and how bad Dad's fancy cologne smelled. It's all light and warmth and comfort in his head, and he thinks his brother can hear that, if he says it the right way, in just the right tone. He thinks his brother'd have to be crazy not to think that's the best thing that could possibly be. As he's skimming _'macaque'_ he falls silent again. The fire murmurs to fill the quiet.

"I don't remember," the younger finally admits, just when the older begins to think he's asleep.

"Well, that's what I'm here for." The book snaps shut. He throws it into the fire. It sputters briefly before dragging yellow-gold fingers across the dry leather of the cover.

"We didn't have to leave."

"Yeah we did. You know why. It was bad there." He watches the blackening pages curl up and dissolve.

Even the soft crackle-pop of the fire almost drown the next sentence. "Dad didn't have to leave."

His silhouette tightens and condenses. "Sammy, go to sleep."

"We'd have a nice house," the younger mumbles sleepily. "We wouldn't leave it empty like these."

"Sam—"

"Dean," is the automatic response, and the names fit comfortably together: _Dean an' Sam, Sam an' Dean_. There's the soft, spaced-out breaths of near-sleep, and then a final, barely audible question: "Why'd everyone leave?"

His voice drops to exasperation, bordering on something unidentifiable. "_Sam_…"

But there's no response to that.

He gets to his feet and tucks a dead man's blanket around his younger brother's shoulders. He sinks into the opposite end of the same dead man's couch and shifts for twenty minutes, seeking some form of comfort in the soft cushions.

Over his head reddish-orange light plays across the tin sheeting of the ceiling. It soaks up the light in liquid drops, scattering it to every corner of the room.

He won't say it, but he hates houses like this. The empty ones, where nobody goes. The ones no one touches. They're afraid, mostly; afraid of what happened to the people that did live here.

He hates these empty places. He prefers the haunted ones.

In the haunted ones something's there, or was, before everything.

* * *

"Unsafe," the woman says. "Better off," she says.

"…what John wanted?" the man asks.

Bare feet skid on a scratched hardwood floor as a sun-dark hand seizes the door handle. The door and that handle are all that's between him and the next room, all that's between him and those words.

_'Wanted.'_

Dean lunges and grabs the door handle, and he looks back, because he always looks back. Sammy isn't there. He's supposed to be watching Sammy, while their keepers talk in the next room. They're talking about 'adult stuff.'

"Permanent care," the woman says, Miss Cindy, who is old and wears too much make-up and cooks lots of steamed zucchini because that's all she can get to grow in the chunky clods of clay out back.

He looks to the door distractedly, his heart hammering in his chest, but then he's pounding down the hall, past the scattered crayons and paper that Sammy had been playing with. Sammy isn't there, so _'wanted'_ is forgotten, _'wanted'_ and _'permanent care',_ forgotten as everything is when Sammy isn't there.

The door at the end of the hall is ajar. He pauses, staring at the cross-stitched sampler hanging from the door, dark blue words over a sunny yellow starburst. "_If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy strength is small._ Proverbs 24:10." The door's ajar because Sammy went in there, even though they aren't supposed to, even though he _ordered_ Sammy not to.

He brushes the door and the sampler and the proverb aside.

The room smells old, like dirt and dust and musty clothes. He can see his little brother's sneakers on the other side of the bed. Everything's quiet, except for the old woman's slow, raspy breathing.

As he comes around the bed she curls sandpapery gnarled fingers around the face of Sammy, _his_ Sammy. Her skin is dark, spotted, the color of the reddish clay out back. It makes Dean think of the stories his mom would tell of clay-creatures, golems, and the far-off wizards that made them. Her eyes are shining in the dull milky way old people's eyes do, that way that makes Dean suspect that she doesn't know what she's seeing at all. But she's smiling, too, through bird-thin lips, and Sammy's staring at her in wide-eyed awe. He's probably never seen someone so old before.

Miss Cindy's mother passes a hand through Sam's mop head and then she's reaching for Dean, too, resting her hand in his short-cut hair. It's a bony hand, cold, wrapped in ropy veins and paper-thin skin. That's all he can take; Dean pulls back, and pulls Sammy back too. He doesn't like the cold hand, reaching out blind and weak and lost. Grasping.

The old woman shakes her head twice, and her dumb cloudy eyes are all misty. She opens her mouth to speak, closes it again. The folds of skin hanging loose from her neck quiver.

Dean apologizes in his most adult voice and grabs Sam roughly by the upper arm, pulling him out of the room. The lady just looks up to the open window, letting shaking hands fall back into her lap.

The wrinkled, yellowed pictures on the walls tremble with his wrath when they reach the hallway. "You shouldn't be in there, Sam. I told you not to go in there."

"She was sad," Sammy says.

"Didn't I tell you? That was an _order_, Sam."

The six-year-old flinches and stares at his feet, his toes streaked with green from running in the grass.

"Don't go in there again. You hear me?"

"Yeah," he mumbles, contrite.

"We've got to pack. Dad's friend won't wait around long."

He's almost crushing Sam's hand when he drags him towards the stairs, but Sammy isn't protesting, and Dean's just thinking, _'wanted,'_ and he doesn't know what bothers him more, except he's seeing Miss Mosely smiling weak and saying, _'Your dad'll come back soon, okay?'_ And the old woman in the back room is nodding, nodding and picking up her faded Book of Proverbs, and Dean wonders if there's one in there for that, one for past-tense verbs and that deep endless pit in the bottom of his stomach.

* * *

Out on the Fringe, in '97, they walk right through the path of a tornado. The sky burns the color of sulfur for miles around before the storm catches up with them, just as they skirt the edges of an abandoned town. Wind tears up empty lots and dead grass before rain beats everything back down again. When they feel the sickly lurch of a shift in the air, they start to run with backpacks hefted up over their heads. Welts spring up on their arms and shoulders from the wet, brutal smacks of hail. Diving into a ditch, they crouch there, listening to the despondent howl of the wind. The howl is a roar is a deafening shriek, and it's all Sam can do not to bite his fist to stifle a scream and angry, bitter, scared tears that he can't quite rationalize. It's the sound of a world dying.

When it's quiet again, when they're breathing raggedly and smelling torn-up ozone, Dean murmurs that that's what everything is now – a yellow haze, waiting for one last gust to rip up what little is left.

Sam can't argue the fact. He doesn't remember life before any of this.

When they look back, the town's gone. They're alone, again. In a fleeting sense, Sam's happier for it. At least the town can rest that way, lying down in the empty prairie.

* * *

_FINIS PART II_

* * *


End file.
